News
Your Saturday morning spin through what is making the business headlines across the Irish and international media
8.30am – Good morning from the Business Post newsroom. Daniel McConnell here with the top stories making the headlines in Ireland and from across the world.
Irish broadcasters taking ‘legal advice’ on new gambling bill, says mobile tech provider
Fonix, a British mobile-payment technology group, says its broadcaster customers in Ireland – which include RTÉ, Wireless Radio Ireland and Bauer Media – are continuing to seek legal advice over what impact the new Gambling Regulation Bill will have on their businesses, the Irish Independent is reporting.
In a trading note posted to the London Stock Exchange, where it is listed, Fonix pointed out that the bill makes no specific references to the phone-in competitions that are run by broadcasters.
It reveals that these competitions “represented the vast majority of the £2.2m (€2.6m) of Fonix’s non-UK gross profit” in its last financial year. In its most recent financial returns, the British company said overseas markets – Ireland – represented about 12pc of its gross profits.
The Gambling Regulation Bill was passed by the Oireachtas on Wednesday and is now with President Michael D Higgins for signing. It provides for the establishment of a Gambling Regulatory Authority, which will have a budget of €9.1m next year.
PTSB says services restored after technical problems left customers unable to make payments
PTSB has said its systems are operating normally again after customers experienced severe problems with the bank’s technology on Friday evening with many complaining they were unable to pay with cards or withdraw cash.
The Irish Times reports that the company’s customer service agents said that at about 8.45pm a technical issue that prevented many customers using card and other services had been resolved and this was subsequently confirmed by the bank
Trump tells Rupert Murdoch to help him secure US election ‘victory’
Donald Trump has called on Rupert Murdoch to stop Fox News from airing “negative commercials” that might damage his re-election campaign, saying the conservative media billionaire should help deliver “victory” for him in November, according to the Financial Times.
Speaking to the network’s Fox & Friends morning talk show on Friday, the former president said he would tell Murdoch that the influential cable network should keep “horrible people” off air to aid his campaign in the final days of the White House race. “I’m going to tell him something very simple, because I can’t talk to anybody else about it,” Trump said: “Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days.”
“And don’t put on there, there are horrible people that come and lie,” Trump said. “I am going to say, Rupert, please do it this way, and then we are going to have a victory, because I think everybody wants that.”
‘Soft landing’ bets push US corporate spreads to lowest in almost 20 years
The gap between corporate bond yields and US Treasuries has narrowed to its lowest in almost 20 years, as investors pile into bets on a “soft landing” for the world’s largest economy, according to the Financial Times.
The spread — or additional borrowing cost — paid by investment-grade companies relative to the US government fell to just 0.83 percentage points this week, the smallest gap since March 2005.
The spread for borrowers in the high-yield or “junk”-rated bond market is now just 2.89 percentage points, according to ICE BofA data — the lowest since mid-2007. The narrowing spreads — a proxy for the risk of default — reflect investors’ belief that the US Federal Reserve will succeed in taming inflation without triggering a recession in which some companies would struggle to repay their debt.
But some fund managers fear the $11tn US corporate bond market is too complacent about lingering economic risks or possible turbulence after November’s presidential election. “Broadly speaking, the market is entirely priced for a soft landing,” said Mike Scott, head of global high yield at asset manager Man Group.